The Future of Public Mental Health: Challenges and Opportunities.

Policy Points Social policies such as policies advancing universal childcare to expand Medicaid coverage of home- and community-based care for seniors and people with disabilities and for universal preschool are the types of policies needed to address social determinants of poor mental health. Population-based global budgeting approaches like accountable care and total cost of care models have the potential to improve population mental health by incentivizing health systems to control costs while simultaneously improving outcomes for the populations they serve. Policies expanding reimbursement for services delivered by peer support specialists are needed. People with lived experience of mental illness are uniquely well suited to helping their peers navigate treatment and other support services.

Differences in public support for handgun purchaser licensing.

OBJECTIVE: To assess whether there are differences in support for handgun purchaser licensing. METHODS: We used data from four waves of online, national polling on gun policy. To estimate differences in support for licensing across groups, we categorised respondents by whether they personally owned a gun, lived in a state with handgun purchaser licensing or lived in a state regulating private sales without a licensing system. RESULTS: Eighty-four per cent of adults living in states with licensing supported the policy compared with 74% in states without the law (p<0.001). Seventy-seven per cent of gun owners living in states with licensing supported the policy vs 59% of gun owners in states without licensing (p<0.001). CONCLUSIONS: Support for licensing among gun owners living in states with these laws, many of whom have presumably gone through the process, was much higher than gun owners in states without such laws.